Inside Job
Cinema Nova, March 07, 2011
Movie #17 for 2011
The US government’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) recently found that the 2008 Global Financial Crisis - which much of the world is still recovering from - was both foreseeable and avoidable. Inside Job agrees and warns that systemic change is required or the financial instructions and practices that caused the crisis may again steer us towards the same problem.
Writer, director and producer CHARLES FERGUSON exposes startling truths about US finance and economics (disturbingly similar to what the 2010 documentary Food Inc. exposed about the US food industry): that folks who earn massive salaries as CEOs and board members of financial institutions (like Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch and CitiGroup - names you may remember as key players in the financial meltdown) are also key advisors to the government. Can you spell conflict of interest? Ferguson also lays bare the inherent failing of the bonus system where executives are paid massive amounts of money for high risk transactions that undermine the stability of the institutions and organizations that they are supposed to be safekeeping.
The scary thing about the documentary, and the crisis - as NPR’s Planet Money podcast and the FCIC also found - was the staggering lack of accountability - even now, everyone is passing the buck and denying responsibility.
It’s an appalling state of affairs (and on the surface quite complicated) and Inside Job does well to explain it thoroughly and lucidly. Ferguson ends with a call to arms and vigilance against allowing another crisis to happen, but he doesn’t really say how. So let me: close your bank account and sign up with a credit union. Easy.
Also, added bonus, Inside Job is narrated by MATT DAMON. That man is everywhere.
